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Create and Implement Sustainability Plans for Your Site!

Contains 20 Model Tools—including Memos, House Rules, Agreements, Notices, Checklists, and more—that you can adapt and use immediately at your site!

This comprehensive guide will help owners and managers of affordable housing sites create and implement sustainability plans for their sites. This guide explains how to:

Save money by reducing energy and water consumption;

Get residents to adopt “green” practices, such as recycling and composting;

Get incentives for sustainability initiatives, including major energy-saving improvements and retrofits; and

Improve the health of residents by:

Reducing their exposure to toxic paints, pesticides, cleaning products, and other chemicals

Improving their access to healthy food

Creating a community garden

Implementing a no-smoking policy

This comprehensive sustainability guide recognizes that affordable housing is more than just a place to live. Providing high-quality affordable housing gives low-income households the opportunity to succeed and to stay healthy in their homes. Creating a sustainability plan for “green” operations and healthy site practices can help make this happen. This guide will show you how to set goals for reducing overall energy costs, both for the site and for residents, and take steps to improve your residents’ quality of life by improving the site’s air and other health impacts.

HUD takes environmental sustainability at affordable housing sites seriously by requiring and rewarding many energy-efficiency and other conservation practices at assisted sites. And every section of this guide gives you links to resources that offer financial incentives, expertise, and free tools you can adapt and use to meet the sustainability goals at your site.

Author Carolyn Zezima has spoken to affordable housing and sustainability experts across the country, and has found that many sites report that when they adopt sustainability practices, they can trim operational costs, reduce health risks, and improve comfort for residents. With help from these experts, this guide will help you find ways to:

Increase the value and quality of your site

Reduce operating costs

Conserve energy and environmental resources

Improve resident and employee well-being

Sustainability plans don’t just help the site save money. A well-implemented sustainability plan also helps low-income residents succeed by helping them save money and become healthier, through sustainable site practices like community gardens that increase their access to healthy food, and green cleaning policies and training that reduce their exposure to chemicals in their units and the site’s common areas.

The popularity of community gardens has exploded in recent years to over 18,000 community gardens in the U.S. and Canada. Many assisted and public housing sites see the benefits of having community gardening programs for residents and have started these programs at their sites. For example, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has about 700 gardens at its housing sites, and even has an in-house “Garden & Greening” program that supports NYCHA residents who want to create a community garden at their sites. And HUD has several programs, such as its Neighborhood Networks program, that encourage assisted sites to start community gardens for residents. this free download gives you the basics about community gardens, describe the benefits you’ll reap, and explain the steps to take to start and manage a community garden program at your assisted site.

Assisted Housing Management Insider

In today’s heavily regulated government-assisted housing field, savvy site owners and managers turn to Assisted Housing Management Insider for the guidance they need to avoid legal missteps, hasty decisions, overlooked notices, or even a poor choice of words—all in an effort to prevent costly legal problems. LEARN MORE NOW!

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